1.

Mura Masa – Mura Masa

Collaborator laden debut albums are hard to create cohesively but Mura Masa’s production characterised by box-of-tricks percussion, playful steel drum tones and electronic and R&B pop music is strong enough to stand up to contributions from a wide cast of singers like Damon Albarn, Christine and the Queens, Bonzai, NAO, Charli XCX, ASAP Rocky and Desiigner. Much of it was heard in advance as is the custom these days but contributions from AK Paul, Jamie Lidell and Tom Tripp add to the flavour. The album feels like the start of a journey and it’s a very repeatable one.

2.

Oh Wonder – Ultralife

A band with a gift for melody, Ultralife is the English duo’s first album to be constructed as one, as opposed to 2015’s debut album which collected the singles they released monthly that garnered them fans in the first place. Not much has changed in the tunes department and that’s a good thing. Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West make bright and breezy songs that are easily-digestible; perfectly conceived. Pop but on their own terms. If anything, their songwriting has become moire confident and more upbeat without losing their initial charm.

3.

Mr Jukes – God First

Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman has made a hip-hop beat production record with guests like BJ The Chicago Kid, Charles Bradley, Lianne La Havas and De La Soul. It’s a fine record that crosses the streams between rap, soul and retro funk with aplomb, a surprising thing for a former indie band member but as a jazz-trained musician, Steadman is able to indulge and impress.

4.

Sheer Mag – Need To Feel Your Love

There’s a lot to be said for mining the past when you take the best qualities while leaving the pomp. Philadelphia rock band Sheer Mag are the best 70s rock band around based on their new album. There’s nothing but kicking out the rock’n’roll jams and good times throughout with Tina Halladay’s sneering vocal bringing old sounds alive once more. This could totally work as an alternative soundtrack to Richard Linklater’s film Dazed and Confused.

5.

One Shabazz Palaces is usually dense enough to take in in one week but the Sub Pop alt-rap futurists went and released two albums. No one quite explores the outer fringes quite like Shabazz and these two albums compliment that interstellar, out-space quality with a laser-guided production precision that was lacking in 2014’s Lese Majesty. I’m still early days listening to these album but it’s quite a trip.

Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West, aka Oh Wonder have trailed their second record with a new single called ‘Ultralife’.

The song is a more pop and layered take on the band’s super melodic sound and it moves away from the minimalism that defined their early work. It was like their debut, entirely written, recorded and produced by Oh Wonder.

Check it out here:

Buy the song. The song has been added to the Nialler9 New Music Spotify playlist:

Two of my favourite new artists on the same track. Awesome. Oh Wonder just dropped their debut album after 12 months and 12 songs – their melodic bright spacious pop music is still on rotation amongst it all. Jack Casey aka Kildare producer EMBRZ has been one of the most unique electronic producers to emerge from Ireland in the last two years, cultivating a twinkling modern electronic sound himself.

The EMBRZ remix is indeed like a collision of both their styles with an added higher tempo. Good work:

It’s nearly 12 months since Oh Wonder first appeared and as the earth comes to a full revolution, the band are just weeks away from releasing their debut album on September 4th, which will be streamed in full here very soon.

Another marker for the band – their live debut, which was recorded for BBC Radio 1 at Maida Vale. Watch the band perform ‘Drive‘ above and catch more at the iPlayer (UK only).

It’s almost hard to believe but the Oh Wonder album is dropping next month. ‘Drive’, the band’s latest single has just received a video treatment featuring the band on American-inspired road trip with “Anthony as a figment of Josephine’s imagination, encouraging her to take risks and lose herself in the moment”.

You won’t get no April Fool’s from me, only great tunes like this one. London production duo Oh Wonder, Josephine and Anthony, dropped their eighth wonder ‘Midnight Moon’. The band have announced their first live shows in London, Paris, New York and LA later in the year. Would be nice to see them in Ireland huh?

SertOne teamed up with another Aussie Maribelle on ‘Lost & Found’, the Chromatics gave us another free download single called I Can Never Be Myself When You’re Around from their new album Dear Tommy. From the North of Ireland, Ciaran Lavery & Ryan Vail teamed up for ‘The Colour Blue’, the first track from a mini-album.

Loud Mouth Collective gave us a song from Volume 7 of their series, Kool Thing returned with a new sound and name – Evvol. Mullingar indie-pop band The Academic released their first track in a while called ‘Different’. The brilliant Oh Wonder came back with their seventh track ‘Technicolour Beat’ and news of their first live show in London and Action Bronson’s collab with Chance The Rapper showed us that his major label debut Mr Wonderful could be just that.

Finally, there’s room for a reissue from a release that kicked off the Awesome Tapes From Africa blog. A bonkers global dance album from Ghanaian singer/producer Ata Kak discovered on cassette gets a release on vinyl, CD, tape and digitally.